


the housesit in halifax

by poalimal



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Recovery, Unresolved Sexual Tension, excerpt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 20:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7698328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Man,' said Sam, 'you need a <i>hobby</i>.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	the housesit in halifax

**Author's Note:**

> An excerpt from a larger AU in which Sam, Steve and Bucky all house-sit for Peggy + Gabe while they're off visiting family in London.

 

 

Two teams were facing off against each other on the ice - but Bucky didn't feel like watching TV.

He looked at the side of Sam's face without saying anything, and kept looking and looking, and looking, and continued not saying anything.

Sam let annoyance take full reign of his face for a solid second - then he got to his feet and tossed the remote at Bucky.

'Man,' he said, 'you need a _hobby_.'

And then he left Bucky in the living room, alone, to watch the game on his iPad.

 

* * *

  

Hobbies, Bucky thought; hobbies, hobbies, hobbies. What someone did in their free time, he remembered, in between the rest of their responsibilities.

Well - what did a hobby become when you didn't have any responsibilities?

 

* * *

 

Steve, who'd never met a household chore he didn't want to immediately vanquish, suggested Bucky take up gardening, rein in the backyard some. Bucky spent two whole days making a mangle of the hydrangeas before he gave up and just went for the weeds.

Thursday he fell asleep in the garden-noon, woke up at dusk, Sam's hand warm and solid and real on his shoulder.

Wake up, Sam did and did not say - and Bucky did and did not reach up and tumble him down. For a moment, Sam smiled down at him like he was Steve.

'--I'm awake,' he said, hoarsely.

'Yea, I can see that,' Sam said, wry, smelling of menthol cough drops. A sense-memory of an older woman -- an older woman Bucky must have known, once -- rose before his eyes. She walked with him and Sam back to the house - turned to him, smiled, and vanished.

'There was a woman, who lived downstairs,' he asked Steve, over the phone, a quarter of an hour later. In the kitchen Sam was painstakingly grating the parmesan.

'OK,' said Steve, sounding puzzled. There was a moment of dead air, a half-second where Bucky could only hear the supermarket around Steve, a half-second where the impenetrable sensation of being _assessed_ came full and clear across the phone, a half-second where Bucky thought, oh, fuck _this_ \- then Steve came back on and said, somewhat impatiently: 'What woman, Buck?'

Bucky relaxed all over - if Steve was doing something else, that meant he was less focused on Bucky's shit. 'The woman downstairs,' he explained. 'She always gave us mints...?' What else was true about her? He tried to remember. 'Her sister wasn't white - but we weren't supposed to know. Hmm.' He thought some more. 'You saw her naked, Stevie - made her scream?'

'Aw, _jeez_ , Buck,' Steve hissed. A pause. The cashier asked if he wanted the different ice cream flavours in two different bags? Steve yes-please-thank-you'd.

'Y-e-a,' he said to Bucky, finally, dry as all get out, 'I remember her. Miss Mary.' Miss Mary Menthol, they called her, 'cause she always smelled like Vicks. 'What brought this on?'

Bucky turned away from the window to look back into the house. From here he could see the dining room - glimpses of Sam's broad shoulders in the kitchen. The little cooking tune he'd actually gone and turned into a fully-fledged song in the space of half an hour.

' _Dinn-er's almost rea-dy_ ,' he sang, ' _we gone eat up this spa-gh-eddy_.'

He had a good voice. Good shoulders, good face. If Bucky pushed him up against the wall, he'd be sturdy - he wouldn't break.

He also probably wouldn't like it very much.

'I don't think the gardening is working,' Bucky concluded.

 

* * *

 

 _Potential Hobbies_  
_~~Gardening~~ _

 

* * *

 

 ~~~~ _No responsibilities_ was obviously not really true. Obviously he had a responsibility to Steve, to Sam - they'd found him, after HYDRA went down - they'd found him, and kept finding him until he wanted to be found. Even if Sam wasn't in the picture Steve would've needed looking after. And maybe if Sam wasn't in the picture that person looking-after would've been Bucky, again. Well - maybe a lot of things might've been different - but they weren't.

To Peg, to Gabe, Bucky had a responsibility to (if nothing else) at least make it easy to be around him. He had a responsibility to Nat - she understood that other part of him, that fury, that unfathoming - that shame. He had a responsibility to life, to preserve and protect it in others.

But something greater than responsibility fell between him and the dead. Between them laid a debt - an enormous debt he could never possibly hope to pay.

For the other Steve, the other Bucky, for his sister and parents, for the first man that ever saw him drunk, for the first woman he ever kissed, for the women and men he'd slept with and sucked and held and killed - for all the ghosts he'd left behind, he had no choice but to try and remember.

 

* * *

 

A memory he'd never shared with Steve because he wanted it to be true: Rebecca, on her 8th birthday, had asked for lemon cake, but gotten vanilla instead.

 

* * *

  

 _Potential Hobbies_  
_~~Gardening~~ _  
_~~Baking~~ _

 

* * *

 

'How do you keep it all together?' Bucky asked Steve. It was raining and warm and muggsy out and Sam wanted to go _swimming_ because he was a very troubled individual. 'When it gets all...muddled.'

'I don't know,' Steve said, in an unaffected way that Bucky was beginning to think was feigned, 'what do you mean - keep it together?'

He'd actually said, keep it _all_ together...but sometimes Steve heard what he wanted to hear. 'The memories,' Bucky clarified. 'The Now--' he held out one hand, palm-up '--and the Then.' Other hand, palm-down.

On second thought - he placed one hand over the other, palm-up, and the other over the other, palm-down, again and again. The many Then's of Bucky Barnes.

He looked up at Steve's face, grinning, and was surprised to see a look of real distress on him.

'Well,' he blanked his face when he noticed Bucky observing him, the big _faker_ , 'I dunno. How do you remember the things you don't want to forget in general? The things that you know have happened.'

'Why,' said Bucky, widening his eyes, 'I tie a little string around my finger, of course.' He blinked his eyes prettily. Steve's face went slack and sarcastic, like, _oh, is that right?_

Sam, who'd come down the stairs in a top that showed off his shoulders, his chest, his arms, laughed out loud. 'You'd need a hell of a lot of string for that shit, man,' he said, nudging Bucky on his way to the closet.

'Hey, are you ok?' Steve said, with some concern (possibly also feigned - who knew with him). 'You look...flushed.'

Bucky rolled his eyes. '--Shut up, Steve.'

 

* * *

 

 _Potential Hobbies_  
_~~Gardening~~ _  
_~~Baking~~ _  
_~~Swimming~~ _

 

* * *

 

 ~~~~There had to be a difference. There were the things you had to do, the things you ought to do...and then there were the things you chose to do. That made you feel good. That you did not because you had to or because you had nothing else to do, but because you actively wanted to.

Take, for example, running. Sam ran in general because he thought it kept him healthy - but Steve ran because he _wanted_ to. And they ran together because being together while running was something they both liked. For his part Bucky didn't run at all, with them or alone, because he was always worried his arm was gonna catch on something. Also as an activity it was just a little boring to him. He was always hyper-aware of the people around him and, well, it just wasn't very fun.

Anything that involved crowds or a lot of people Bucky didn't really like, if he was being totally honest. Dr Nagi, she said that was probably a remnant of the conditioning: thinking of people as liabilities, rather than as beings just like you, sharing in a public space. Just like you.

If Bucky could figure out what that meant - that 'you' that was him - maybe then he could figure out something so fucking simple as what he liked to do.

 

* * *

 

 _~~Potential Hobbies~~ _  
_~~Gardening~~ _  
_~~Baking~~ _  
_~~Swimming~~ _

_Things That I Like_  
_Nat's dad jokes_  
_5 PM_  
_Steve when he gets hit on by strangers_  
_Sam's laugh, etc._

 

* * *

 

Bucky'd had a dream once, and it hadn't felt like a dream...but he'd been aware of his mind and most of his memories by then for almost three whole years, and he was pretty sure it'd never happened.

Him and someone else, in a crowd someplace, waiting in line somewhere for something. In the dream, he hadn't had to push or fight or punch or twist; he'd just walked on through, snapping his gum, smug, that strong body pressed snug against his side. And the crowd had parted like water, no problem, a voice at the side of his neck behind his ear, warm and amused, saying, well, look at _you_.

In the dream he'd known precisely where he was. He wasn't scared of all the faces, he didn't care about them at all: he didn't freak out when the body behind turned his around, and the voice became a face, and the face became Sam's, and Sam's smile became his own. But then the sounds turned to silence and the silence turned to birdsong, and Bucky rocked upright, startled and annoyed and relieved to find himself alone in his bed.

Deep in the dawn, down all the way from his toes, he breathed in; he let himself remember the feel of the dream, the goodness of it, the surety he'd had - and then he let it go.

 

* * *

 

 _Things That I Like_  
_Nat's dad jokes_  
_5 PM_  
_Steve when he gets hit on by strangers_  
_Sam's laugh, etc._  
_Dreams (sometimes)_  
_Sports?_

 

* * *

 

'Ball,' he said to Sam, Sunday morning, mid-stretch. Steve was waiting outside, on the other side of the screendoor. 'Let's play ball.'

Sam brought his arms back to the side of his body with a slight grunt. 'Need more words than that, man,' he said, cheerfully. Bucky stared at him until his lips twisted, and he sighed. 'Which ball?'

Whichever ball you like, Bucky thought, as strongly as he'd thought anything that day. It was-- it was fucking _annoying_ , was what it was. Him wanting Sam so goddamn much and Sam not even caring, not even liking him back, really -- Sam didn't owe him nothing, Sam didn't owe him a single thing. But he wanted--, he _wanted_ \--

this didn't feel good. No, this felt more like one of the other things: the thing you didn't want to do, but couldn't really help about having to.

Bucky realised he was stood there staring at Sam without saying anything, at the same moment he realised Sam was stood there, staring back at him, also not saying anything.

'I'm trying--I _am_ trying to find a hobby,' he explained. All the blood in his body rushed to his throat, as if trying to physically stop him from saying anything else stupid. He bit his lip, too - just in case.

Sam gave him a look, then, a look he couldn't help but like. Bucky let his lower lip loose, watched Sam track the motion; let his lips part, sure there was breath there at the back of his throat, but not knowing which words would choose to come out.

'I,' he said, 'I--'

'Sam! We goin' or what?' Steve, outside, hopping up and down in impatience. Inside: the moment snapped, for a moment bringing them even closer together, before pushing them further apart.

'Alright, already!' said Sam, quickly bending down. Muttering: 'Can't a man tie his shoes in peace?'

Bucky looked down at him, exhaled all his thoughts as silently as possible - rocked back a little on his heels.

'Have a good run,' he said, roughly.

'...Thanks, man,' Sam said, straightening up. The look on his face wasn't anything Bucky had ever seen before: it didn't look like it was meant for Steve...but then it didn't really look like it was meant for him, either. 'And maybe when I get back - maybe we can play ball.'

 

* * *

 

 _Things That I Like_  
_Nat's dad jokes_  
_5 PM_  
_Steve when he gets hit on by strangers_  
~~_Sam's laugh, etc._ ~~  
_Dreams (sometimes)_  
~~_Sports?_ ~~  
_Sam_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky may have A Thing for Sam, but Sam is not a thing.


End file.
